Data Visualization

Data Visualization

An infographic poster that tracks disproportionate jailing of different races across the united states.

This poster was selected by Washington University faculty to be a part of the University's collection of student work.

For the project I was given a data set of jailing in each state broken down by race. I wanted to use my poster to highlight the fact that minorities are often incarcerated at disproportionate rates. To do so I compared the percentage of each race in each state with the percentage of that race in the states' incarcerated population. This produced a ratio that would identify which states jailed at disproportionate race.

For each state, the idea ration is 1. That is, for each state is would be expected that the proportion of a given race in the state is equal to the proportion of that race in jail. Anything greater than 1 indicates that the state is jailing a higher percentage of that race than expected. Anything less than 1 indicates that the state is jailing a lower percentage of that race than expected.

To express this visually, I created a system of illustrated isometric states. A ratio of 1 is indicated by a completely flat state. Anything less than one is depicted by a state receding backwards getting further backwards as the ratio moves away from one. Anything above one is depicted by a state moving forwards, getting further forward as the ratio grows.

These isometric states where displayed on the poster all together as keys for each state, to identify which states jailing was the most disproportionate, and in rows for each state to help compare the ratio across races.